BTC Sessions - "There Needs to be a Revolution" Heading Off the $38T Debt Cliff | Bitcoin Boomers

Starting point is 00:00:00 A lot of people don't want to hear this, but I believe there needs to be a revolution of some kind. And maybe that's when Bitcoin has its moment. Do you ever feel like the United States is in that situation right now, that we are over-expanded? If we look at major media outlets, they've been adversarial. It was just a fair, more balanced system. We go back to a sound money standard. We really believe that Bitcoin is the way out of this thing. Be careful what you wish for, because in a regulatory framework, you're inviting all sorts of mischief.

Starting point is 00:00:30 We'll even use Reagan's words, right? You know, government is the problem. Well, let's get them the hell out of money. On its way to becoming truly the money supplier, the monetary system, it has to. Welcome to episode four of the Bitcoin Boomers. I'm Bob Burnett. I'm here with my co-hosts, Gary Leland and Lawrence Lepard. And today we have a special guest named John Highbush.

Starting point is 00:00:55 John is an old friend of mine. We worked together back about 30 years ago while I was at Gateway and have kept in touch since we both went into other pastures. In our first episode of this series, we had a gentleman by the name of George Bodine, and we introduced them as potentially the most interesting man in the world, but I do think we have another candidate here. John, and we'll go into the details of his history, but John has had a varied and illustrious career. in politics, in business, in writing, in philanthropy. We're going to dig into a whole bunch of it. But welcome, John. I'm so glad you could join us.

Starting point is 00:01:43 Hey, great to be with you, Bob, Lawrence, and Gary. So, John, I think, you know, I alluded to some of the various hats you've worn kind of in your life. And I'm being serious, by the way, not in Jess, that you've led a tremendously interesting life. I think a lot of us have been blessed to have done so, but you've touched a lot of lives and seen a lot of things. You and you and I having a personal relationship, I know some things that maybe some others wouldn't know. But I thought just to kind of maybe get people acclimated and introduced to you, we could talk

Starting point is 00:02:26 about a few of the things that you've seen in your life. And, no, one of the things I've always found really interesting is you had the opportunity to have dinner with Lady Die. I actually had a date with Lady Die. Oh, well, excuse me. Yeah, I mean, let's upgrade this a little bit. Yes, yes, I'm sorry to shortchange you, John. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you came to have a date with Lady Die and any observations you might have about her. Now, so I started my career as a young man working in the Pentagon, and that's a little job,

Starting point is 00:03:07 almost for nothing job, but moved on to Capitol Hill. And so I was in politics for the first part of my career and jumped from Capitol Hill. This is during the Reagan presidency and became Elizabeth Dole's chief of staff when she was Secretary of Labor for President George H.W. Bush. And when I was chief staff at labor for two years, then jumped over to the American Red Cross of all places. Because Elizabeth was the first cabinet secretary to leave the Bush administration, make that jump. And she asked me to come over with her. And I told her at the time, you know, the one thing I know about the Red Cross Elizabeth is they taught me how to swim, I think. So I was the number three, then the number two under Elizabeth at Red Cross.

Starting point is 00:03:58 She was, she's an incredibly bright Harvard-trained lawyer and incredible personality, hugely smart. She did so many things while at the Red Cross. One of them was she struck up her friendship with Lady Diana, who at the time was the British ambassador for the Red Cross worldwide. And Diana was, as you might remember from that time, was all about landmines and removing landmines from war. nations. And she came over to visit the United States at a time when I had just made the move from running this big national party committee to Gayway, computers, in fact. And so, Bob, you may, I know you will recall our good friend and a CEO, Ted Wade. So I was only on the job at Gateway for a couple of months, and I was in Ted's office and the phone around.

Starting point is 00:04:58 rang. Actually, Ted's secretary came in and said, John, there's a call for you. And I was in this intense discussion with Ted. So I'm like, I'll just tell whoever it is. I'll call him back. So then she comes back and goes, no, they really insist you take the call. And I started feeling bad because I'm like, Ted's going to get mad here. You know, what is? So I said, look, I don't care who it is. I'm in a meeting. She comes back a third time and shows door to Ted says, just take the stupid call.

Starting point is 00:05:28 I pick up the phone and there's nobody on the line but there's a recording and it's Frank Sinatra singing Happy Birthday and when it gets to Happy Birthday, I hear Elizabeth's voice which she says, John. And at the end of the recording, it's another recording from Elizabeth's which says, Just wanted to wish you happy birthday. And as a birthday president, I'd like to know if you'd like to go on a date with Lady Diana. Yeah. Yeah, this meeting's over. And I flew back and for my birthday, she and Bob Dole, her husband,

Starting point is 00:06:08 were entertaining Diana, who was on a visit to D.C. for the Red Cross purposes. And we all went out for dinner and a date and it just blew my mind. Because at the time, I don't know how many American males, I was singing. at the time. We're in love with Lady Diana. What I sure was. That's, that's fabulous. So that would have been like, what, me, John, like 98, 98, well, yeah, yeah, 97, it was 97. Now, John has a lovely wife. Her name's Marcella. He did, he did very well. Don't tell, don't tell her this lady die story. So life was very kind, and she's a wonderful woman, I'm sure. I'm sure the right thing happened. But imagine how different history might be had this gone a different

Starting point is 00:07:01 direction. Wow. No, and one of the most, I don't know, pretty tough moments is I wasn't that much further. I don't know, maybe it was six or eight months. I'm not getting, I won't get the dates right. But then she dies crashing in that tunnel in Paris. It was like, oh, you know, when that kind of thing happens. And you just relatively recently have been with with her. was really striking. Yeah. But yeah, my job said,

Starting point is 00:07:29 first half of my life was just pure politics and nonprofit. And then I had, I literally remember when I was chief of staff at labor, I was meeting with all these major business figures, you know, the CEO of McDonald's and all the rest. And I sat there during the conversation with what I'm thinking, you know what,

Starting point is 00:07:47 this is interesting. I don't know the first thing about business. Not but for, I mean, I knew politics and all, the rest, but this is a huge hole in my resume. I had all these job offers to be a lobbyist in D.C., but Gayway called me. And I thought, what is this? Who's that? You know, well, this little computer startup in the middle of the cornfield in Iowa, and I said, I got to check this out. And that's,

Starting point is 00:08:13 that's how I got introduced to the tech space and business and, you know, the rest is history. You know, I think it's really cool, John. I don't know that I've ever heard you say what you just said, which was that you had that realization that you didn't understand and then have this experience in the business side. And, you know, I think that's one of the huge problems with the political base today is, you know, I do have to interface in my current role with lots of people in Washington. And it is shocking how little business acumen they have. how little understanding of the way business really works. And yet they're creating the regulations.

Starting point is 00:09:00 They're creating the laws. And it's scary as shit. Yeah, you bet it is. And to some extent, Bob, that's in part a matter of age. And I say that because when I was 25 years old as a legislative director working on Capitol Hill, I succeeded in killing a defense platform, a weapon system, put tens of thousands of people out of business, $5 billion, you know, went away. You know, I mean, when you're those jobs at a very young age, you get placed with an enormous

Starting point is 00:09:43 amount of responsibility. And you don't even barely understand the world right near you, much less, you know, everything around you. And so at a young age, you have a lot of power, but not a lot of knowledge. And, you know, of course, you gain knowledge as you move forward, but so much of our, you know, many, many, many of the people that have exceeded to the highest level in politics have never worked a day in their life outside of public office. And, you know, they take tours of business.

Starting point is 00:10:17 They don't understand them. You know, so it's a real flaw in our system. I'm not sure how to fix it. I definitely support term limits, you know, because if we could, there's just too much power concentration and people wanting to spend their career in Washington rather than, you know, actually go out and be a real person somewhere. Well, John, since you've been in that field, I guess,

Starting point is 00:10:40 do you think that's ever going to be possible to get term limits since they have to vote on, like, cutting their careers out? I'll put it this way. See, I've always been right of center on the conservative end of the political spectrum. And I've worked for members of Congress and in administrations where if we could cut federal government spending in half, I'm in. You know, how do we get there? Right. And because it's the national debt and what it has done to this nation, the whole monetary system, everything, it's just it is so extremely flawed.

Starting point is 00:11:18 And the problem is, if you're an average member of Congress with the Senate, there's nothing in it for you to cut spending. I mean, it puts you in trouble during election time. And so they accumulate this power by continuing to give it away, you know, spend beyond our means. And so now we've got a $37 trillion national debt. I think tournament has come around when this nation ends up upside down in some kind of a revolution. where people have just frankly had enough. I mean, and do I see that day in the near term? No, but that is definitely where we're heading.

Starting point is 00:11:58 We are heading off a cliff, a fiscal cliff, and it's because there's no discipline in the system. I don't think there's anyone here who disagrees with. Yeah, that's a fourth part. I mean, we've got to reset it. John, I'm curious I was doing the research on your background, and I noticed a strong connection to Reagan, who I admire and to Nancy Reagan as well.

Starting point is 00:12:17 Can you kind of walk us through some of that just because I'd love to hear the firsthand stories of the two of that. You know what I mean? You must have seen things that the three of us would never have seen, you know? Yeah, sure. First, while I've been to the White House hundreds of times, I never worked directly for Ronald Reagan. I was, I got, now, I met him many times. There was in meetings with him, and I worked a lot for Mrs. Reagan. But on Capitol Hill, the congressman I worked for, he got swept in on Reagan's coattails in 1980, just like many others did.

Starting point is 00:12:55 And we had this fairly liberal district, which was not easy to get a re-elected in. Where was it? What state was it from? Fifth District of Oregon. So that Portland suburbs down through Salem, the Willamid Valley, that whole area. And so to be pro-Ragan and pro-Ragan economics at the time, and Reagan was all about less taxes, less regulation, cut federal spending and strong defense. That wasn't what Oregon wanted. That was for sure. So my first day on the job is a young kid on Capitol Hill. I got to run across the street and watch Reagan hold up his hand take the oath of office. And then my last day on Capitol Hill, I got invited down to the White House, shake his hand, and watch him get on the helicopter.

Starting point is 00:13:43 copter and they circled the city a couple times before he went back west. But I had been engaged in many, many issues that Reagan was involved in. So having been around him on the legislative side, I got to know him, Mrs. Reagan. And so then I went off of my career thinking, well, that's probably the end of my Reagan connection. But after I left Gateway and did some other things, Mrs. Reagan called me and said, hey, John, would you consider running the Reagan Library? And I was living in La Jolla at the time. And I thought first, I was with my son. We were in a toy store.

Starting point is 00:14:25 He was like five years old screaming. Hi, John, this is Nancy Reagan. And I said, yeah, right. Then it was silence. So that might really be. It's kind of sounded like her. So they said, no, I'd like you to consider moving up to L.A. I was leaving in La Jolla.

Starting point is 00:14:45 I said, well, Mrs. Reagan could ask you one question. Would you consider moving the Reagan Library to La Jolla? I just didn't want to move. And she said, no. Okay. Six months later, there I was, moving to L.A. and running the Reagan Library. So, and when you run the Reagan Library between Mrs. Reagan and everybody and anybody that ever worked for them, they go through there.

Starting point is 00:15:15 And, I mean, it's just a Reagan fest, you know, so I spent 13 years doing that. And that's where some of these stories come in, you know, like you were talking before we went on air about finding a vial of Reagan's blood. I mean, that was kind of a unique situation. and I fought my tail off to make sure we fixed that and we did, but it took a lot of effort. Yeah, John, tell that story. When Hinkley attempted to assassinate him in Washington, D.C., outside the hotel, Reagan didn't know he was shot. He got shoved in the limousine, and he thought he might have broke the Secret Service agent,

Starting point is 00:15:56 might have broken a rib when he pushed him in, and he just said, let's get back to the White House. And then the Secret Service agent noticed that blood was starting to form on his lips. And he said, bullshit. We're going straight to GW. Hospital. And they went into the hospital. And so when Reagan, they pulled the bullet out of him and he had lost, believe this or not, he had lost one half of his blood by the time they got a waiting table. So there was plenty of blood to go around.

Starting point is 00:16:27 There was a vial of blood that they took for testing purposes to, determine what he had in this system and that sort of thing. And over the, that blood got put in a storage facility and over the years kind of got forgotten. And then a nurse found it and stole it and took it home. And she passed away and then her son found it. And her son decides he wants to sell it on eBay. This was not a good situation. Mrs. Reagan called me and said, Have you read this story about Ronnie's blood? And I said, yeah. She said, you're going to go get it.

Starting point is 00:17:08 And we had, I mean, lots of lawyers, lots of threats, you know, I mean, we came after them. And they voluntarily gave it up. They got so scared of what might occur. And so that blood now is in the safe that's in my old office at the Reagan Library. It just would have been ridiculous. You know, you can't let something like that. So did they give it up?

Starting point is 00:17:30 like no problems they just said oh here's the blood or did it take about a week of lawyers with big sharp things you know by the way um if if um you're out there you've never been to the reagan library it's a phenomenal facility um the the work that john did to build it i've had the pleasure of of going there and getting a tour from john and kind of going even into some rooms and things that maybe not everybody gets to go to and just absolutely fascinating. And whether you're a fan of Reagan or not, I happen to be, but whether you're a fan or not, it's a major part of American history. And it's just hard not to even walk through those halls and not kind of just feel the vibe, you know, and it must have been pretty cool to go there every day, John. Yeah, really was.

Starting point is 00:18:20 I mean, and the thing is, when you hear the word library, you know, you just think some big place with a lot of books on the shelves. It's just so much more than that. It's an enormous museum. You know, you can climb aboard Air Force One. And Air Force One is inside the museum. Yeah, yeah. Do you guys remember Boone Pickens? Yeah, sure. Yes. Yeah, well, Boone wrote a $50 million check to put a big glass case around Air Force One so that the library could accept the plane from the Air Force. How did they get it there? I never asked that question. So its last flight was out to an Air Force base here in California. They took the wings off.

Starting point is 00:18:57 They took off the tail. They flew it in pieces. They had to shut down I-5 and, you know, it was really something. But it took about a year to reassemble. And now, if you just charge up the batteries and put gas in it, you can fly it away. It was restored by GE and Boeing to a flying condition. You know, the great thing I got this conversation, if we haven't talked about about economics, Because I was thinking I was going to tell you guys, I know you all, know economics backwards forwards,

Starting point is 00:19:29 when I'm thinking about starting a GoFundMe campaign for me to make up for my lack of knowledge in economics. So if you guys would be interested in contributing to that. You need to make that for Bitcoin. In your reading list, if you probably read 10 books, you'll be 80% of where you need to be. I mean, the creature from Gretchen from Jekyll Island by Edmund Griffith. You know that bar? No. I don't know how much Bob told you about us, but as you know, we're all Bitcoiners.

Starting point is 00:19:58 And, you know, our belief and my belief, and I think Bob and Gary's too, is that really the monetary system is what's led to the broken nature of our country today. You know, the system is set up to benefit, you know, the politicians and the banks and the Federal Reserve are all kind of a cabal. And they got together. and they rigged the system in their favor, and that's why we have the wealth inequality, and that's where we have 30% interest rates, and it's really why America is not, you know, the America that we all have grew up, and I don't know where you grew up. John, where did you grow up? What area of the country were you?

Starting point is 00:20:36 McLean, Virginia, right outside Washington, D.C. Yeah, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I think Bob Britton, Wisconsin. I'm not sure. Gary, where did you grow up? Charleston, South Carolina. As we all recall, I mean, there was really a vibrant middle class when we were growing up. My dad was a shopkeeper, and the guy who ran forward to live down the street from us,

Starting point is 00:20:53 and he probably made four or five times what my dad made, but he didn't make 400 times what my dad made. You know what I mean? And it was just, you know, it was just a fair, more balanced system. Probably the biggest crime of our lives that I know I remember, and you probably do two, your brother's similar ages, was Nixon going off the gold standard in 71. That was a really, really bad thing. I mean, when we abat and saw money in 1971, that was the beginning of the end. Now, we got enough institutional momentum because, you know, in 46, we stood at the top of the world,

Starting point is 00:21:28 having one World War II that, you know, and all the other countries were destroyed. So that, you know, we coasted on that man, madam for a long, long, long time. But, you know, the rot, McCreep just came in and pretty soon, you know, you had Cheney saying deficits don't matter. and you had politicians saying, you know, we got to go make the Middle East safe so we could grab all their oil. And the next thing you know, you've spent $8 trillion and maimed a lot of people. And, you know, it's just, it's all frigging tragic. It's absolutely tragic.

Starting point is 00:22:00 And, you know, I know that in my case, I think really in all three of our cases, we're all working and supporting Bitcoin because we really believe that Bitcoin is the way out of this thing. If we go back to a sound money standard, and that could involve gold, by the way, too. The way we like to look at it is gold is analog sound money, and Bitcoin is digital sound money. And both of them have the advantage of being distinct from the government. The reason the government has got away with all this stuff and it's become so out of control, as you alluded to earlier,

Starting point is 00:22:29 is that they can print money into existence. And so the temptation to do that is so large, and they do it, and that keeps them in power. And, you know, the cost, they don't see the cost, but the cost is the working class man or woman who goes to the grocery store and suddenly brown beef is $9 instead of $2, you know, because of all the inflation. So it's really problematic, you know. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.

Starting point is 00:22:59 I remember I was on the budget committee staff in Congress. And at the time, the federal budget deficit deficit, was nearing this, like, all-time high of, like, several hundred billion. And the national debt is not yet one trillion. But we could, we could eyeball and see in three or four years if the spending kept on the path it was. It was going to be a trillion. And that just was a mindblower, right? And now you think about where we are today.

Starting point is 00:23:35 It's absurd. Of course it is. Yeah. In the book, I go through that. I mean, I remember how everyone, was down on Reagan for the deficits and just how irresponsible the Reagan deficits were and there were $100, $200, $200 billion. That was quaint, my comparison.

Starting point is 00:23:51 And one could even argue, and he also got a lot of real GDP growth. I mean, there was a few years in there. We grew 4, 5, 6% a year as a result of that, and that's what led to the failure of the Soviet Union. So one could actually make an argument that it did make sense to deficit spend there. The problem is guys like Dick Cheney and other guys picked up on it and said, hey, Reagan proved the deficits don't matter. No, yeah, in fact, in fact, if you look back at the Reagan years, just like you said, people say, well, he didn't cut the deficit. No, but he did something that was unprecedented at the time. He cut the rate of growth of federal spending.

Starting point is 00:24:25 That was like the best you could do, right? Because Reagan never owned the Congress. He had Democrats were in charge of the House of Representatives all eight years of his presidency. I forgot not. Yeah. Well, go back to the fundamental of all fundamentals. And that is it just, get a true balanced budget act passed. You know, but now we're so far off the cliff. I mean, to balance the federal budget, it would take like Bitcoin-sized, you know, value and any remarkable, we'd have to cut half of the federal budget as exists today. One of the good macro analysts that we follow says you basically have to cut Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending by 50% for the next 15.

Starting point is 00:25:11 years. Good luck with that. Yeah, well, here's another one. In two years, our interest payment on the debt alone is going to exceed all the money we spend on all discretionary programs and all of our defense budget. And then by 2050, interest on the debt alone will exceed the entire federal budget. We will make it. We got to collapse. Yeah. Blockstream Jade is your easy to use Bitcoin-only cold storage solution made for both experts and beginners alike. Its simple, clean interface makes it a great gift to friends and family just starting down their Bitcoin journey. The open-source hardware of the Jade combined with the open-source software of the Blockstream app means full transparency. Like Bitcoin itself, you never have to trust and can always verify.

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Starting point is 00:27:13 as the world's biggest Bitcoin custodians, but for those who prefer to hold their own keys. Learn more about Unchained signature at Unchained.com slash BTC Boomers. Use code Boomers Tenet checkout to get 10% off your first year. Because Bitcoin isn't just for life, it's for generations. I think this review of kind of where we were in the Reagan, era and comparisons where we are now is really important because I think a lot of younger people and even older people probably have no concept as like, how did we get here? And, you know, Larry, for us in the kind of coming from the Bitcoin world and that have really kind of dug in

Starting point is 00:27:53 economics, 71 was a big deal. Like the Nixon removal of us from the gold standard. But that was a temporary removal, Bob. That was temporary. Yeah, he's temporarily, temporarily suspending the redemption of dollars for gold was how it was categorized in the, or how he stated. But I think what's interesting about Reagan, you know, since we're kind of focused there, was that happened in 71. Then by the late 70s, we have Carter, the Carter administration, we have inflation running out of control. It kind of was the foreshadow of kind of what was going to happen, like this chaos, because now the relationship of really all responsibility was gone and accountability. There's a, John, there's a guy in the Bitcoin world that his name's Jack Mallor.

Starting point is 00:28:53 He's a young guy, kind of one of the guys I think that a lot of us find promising about the future. I don't know, he's maybe in his early 30s, but he has his phrase that I give him a lot of credit for. and he says, no man should have to work for what another man can print. And I think it's a wonderful way of categorizing it. And what we've done, in this case, the man is the government. So, you know, at that point, fiscal responsibility became completely, it really didn't matter anymore, right? I mean, to a certain degree, tax revenue didn't even matter that they could print whatever they wanted. And the U.S. has this strange, not strange, but very preferred position too, that because the rest of the world is dependent on the dollar, it's the reserve currency of we kind of export inflation.

Starting point is 00:29:44 So when we grow the money supply, we feel it, but about 80% of the impact of that growth is actually felt outside our borders, not inside, which I find kind of immoral and ethical that, you know, that, that that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that. immoral and ethical that, you know, that that that be the case. How do you think, John, if Reagan, ask you to go inside Reagan's head for a minute here. So if Reagan was president right now and he was looking at this situation, how do you think he would react to $38 trillion and at least the fiscal side of this? Yeah, well, okay. So let's wind the clock back first. when Reagan came in office, postcard, as you say, inflation was 13 and a half percent.

Starting point is 00:30:37 Interest rates were 20 percent. Marginal tax rates were 70 percent. I mean, this, you know, thank God I wasn't working at the time. I was in college or something. What did I care? But when Reagan came in office and these kinds of conditions existed, I don't know how people made it. You know, I mean, so two years later, Reagan lost 26 Republican seats in the House and a few seats in the Senate.

Starting point is 00:31:11 And why is that? You know, I remember at the time the mantra was on the Republican side. Reagan was saying, stay the course, stay the course, you know, fiscal discipline, all that stuff. And the Republicans in Congress were saying, yeah, stay the curse, stay the curse. state occurs, meaning the pain was so great they'd all thought they were going to lose because they started voting against this federal spending and what have you. And Reagan did lose 26 seats. There's a price to be paid by being fiscally disciplined.

Starting point is 00:31:43 It's why you see to this very day, even Republicans are jumping ship, you know, Trump's ship for certain things because they're just trying to preserve their power or basically preserve their seat in Congress. So I have, you know, I watched the phenomenon of Trump in the mid-2015s. And I'm now fully convinced myself. What Trump does is he wakes up in the morning, he goes under the bed, he grabs this binder and it's the Reagan playbook. I mean, if you think about what Reagan stood for, Trump's trying to do many of those things,

Starting point is 00:32:21 a strong national defense, lower taxes. and, you know, from a economic, from a monetary policy standpoint, as you all know, I mean, he's probably the first and only president that has been pro-crypto, you know, pro-bitcoin. He thinks like a fiscal conservative. Now, does he have the ability to pull it off in the modern day, especially with a complexion of Congress like it is? Whole other question, you know, I mean, it's now almost like it's like it's like, become Mount Everest. You know, and not many people have got enough oxygen to make it up there on their own. So I now put, put in a hypothetical, put Reagan in charge, first he'd fall over dead at the size of the debt.

Starting point is 00:33:08 I mean, and he would be urging us to cut spending like you can't believe. He'd also be, you know, pushing for, you know, supply side style tax cuts and the rest. But I genuinely think we're beyond the day when those things are can. work. I mean, I really do believe that, I mean, a lot of people don't want to hear this, but I believe there needs to be a revolution of some kind because the situation gets so bad that there's no choice but for everything to be turned upside down. And maybe that's when there's, you know, Bitcoin has its moment. Until then, I, you know, Baba, I'm, I just, I'm trying to, it's not as though Bitcoin doesn't make perfect sense like gold does. However, I'm trying to understand

Starting point is 00:34:01 how do you get there from here with every vested interest, every economic interest in the United States based in the current system. I don't think it's just going to take a couple pieces of legislation and a president that favors it. I mean, you're asking everybody in Washington who's built their whole careers on power and controlling the monetary policy to say, give up and go home. John, do you think Reagan would be a bit-corner? Yeah, I do. I do.

Starting point is 00:34:31 Because he was always, I mean, think about this. Let's take technology on the, on the, what people used to call Star Wars. Yeah, SDI. I mean, Ronald Reagan had visions of Golden Dome and everything that were now spending money on 40 years ago. I mean, so he was a great outside the box thinker. And he was, you know, he was the one. He invested enormous amount of funds in modernizing the American military through technology. And so, yeah, I do think he'd be a Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:35:02 I look, remember Paul Volcker was the head of the Federal Reserve under Reagan. And with the interest rates as high as it were, Reagan, it kind of went like this. He's like, you know, I think we bought a condo then. And interest was 17%, if I remember correctly or something. Yeah, those 20% rates, I want to put my dad out of business. The thing I loved about Reagan was he always, you know, he was jolly and happy and positive, but he always understood, you know, the government was the fundamental problem. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:35:33 He came out of that, you know, Goldwater, libertarian, West Coast, you know, view that, you know, kind of, we just, you know, who needs a federal government? And to the degree we have one, you know, let's rein it in as much as possible. You know, with the exception up, with the exception of standing up to the Russians, which, you know, one could argue that was actually that was a good use of federal government time and resources. Yeah, yeah. In fact, you just almost stayed at the line exactly. That's the most famous line from Reagan's first inaugural address, which was government is the problem. I can't argue.

Starting point is 00:36:07 Is that exactly what he said? I thought, though. Yeah. I thought it was something similar to that. I think he said the scariest words are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you. Yeah. Yeah. You know, on the economic side with Reagan, I think, I mean, as many as remarkably positive, some of Trump's actions have been, I don't think he's still not done something that has been as big as defeat the entire Soviet Union. right? I mean, that changed the world forever, or at least hopefully forever. And the way he did it was yes, through, I mean, it was, was an economic policy? Yeah, in a way it was because what he essentially did was he looked at Gorbachev and he said, we have economic might, we're going to use it and we're going to build, you know, a defense system like you've never seen. And that was the moment when the Soviets just said, we can't afford this. We give up. That's a sense.

Starting point is 00:37:10 the play. But it did cost the money. We had to rebuild American defenses to make it happen. You know, when Russia was invading Afghanistan back during that time period, I guess basically, I always felt like, Soviets, yes, I'm sorry, Soviets. I always felt like that the end was coming for him soon because they were over expanded, that it would be impossible to keep up with what was going on financially and stuff. Do you ever feel like the United States is in that situation right now, that we are over expanded? copy. Yep. Well, at least, at least during the, you know, roughly the last 10, 12 years, the whole Iraq, Afghanistan, 4A, I mean, you know, what we should have done, it was, you know,

Starting point is 00:37:57 we, you know, we should have gotten a lot of bombers. And over a 10-year period, just struck one time after another from the air and killed whatever we saw a movie that looked anything like Osama bin Laden. But we sure. as hell should not have put boots on the ground in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I mean, a complete waste of time and money. And we were just way overextended on that front. And it probably added a couple trillion dollars for our national debt. So now, military strategists, military strategist would say, well, you can't beat those guys unless you have boots on the ground. And I think our posture should, but we're not looking at beating. We're looking at punishing them. Do you look, John,

Starting point is 00:38:37 it the way that Trump is handling Venezuela, which, you know, hitting the drug boats, seizing the tankers, obviously kidnapping Maduro as a more economically efficient way of trying to achieve something similar? Yeah, well, in Venice, first, there'll be a lot of people I know don't agree with me, but I support every single decision he's made with respect to Venezuela. And, you know, for lots of reasons, but it's a big national security umbrella. I mean, there are the greatest transit point from which drugs in South America, Central South America flow. It kills a lot of people. That's one good reason alone.

Starting point is 00:39:19 The second is they ripped us off. We used to have oil companies down there making money hand over fist, and they took that away from us. You know, but third, they, you know, I think people don't really fully understand to the extent that China and Russia, and Iran were making the country of Venezuela a platform from which to continue to screw with our national security. That's the part that I observed. It reminded me it was like the Cuban Missile Crisis. I mean, this is a country in our house care that's very close by, and we've got these three

Starting point is 00:39:58 state actors that we really don't like, you know, taking over. and that. I think, you know, some people say Trump struck Venezuela, and I think he did. I actually think, I think the CIA absolutely made the call for the Department of Defense. Remember Trump came right out and said, yeah, well, we're sitting in the CIA in there. I mean, he was, you know, very bored about it, and he was right, you know.

Starting point is 00:40:20 Well, you know, but we went and kidnapped a president of Panama, and I don't remember this much action or negativity toward capturing him, and he didn't do near as much as we were seeing from from Maduro Listen, we're going to act like the superpower we are or we're not You know, and if our interests are

Starting point is 00:40:40 Being threatened, we have to act And I think Trump understands that He actually does what he says I think now, you know, Trump can shoot from the hip rhetorically But I think the world now understands When he says something just like Reagan, He really needs it.

Starting point is 00:40:58 And that's good. I think that's good to keep people on their toes in that regard. John, I'm curious, if I can shift just a tiny bit, one of the, one of the reasons we do this show, and it's called the Bitcoin boomers is Gary Larry and I, we're within the Bitcoin community and the Bitcoin cohorts where we're kind of the elders to a certain degree. And there's a couple others, but there are frankly, aren't many, at least that are, that are, are prominent and vocal. And part of what we're here for is to try to get our generation that we share with you

Starting point is 00:41:40 a little more involved, a little more engaged. And, you know, it's hard because Bitcoin is a strange thing. It's not like a startup company. It's not, we're not like AI. We don't have, there's no, there's no company like open. AI or GROC or Google out championing it. There is no leader. There's no central authority.

Starting point is 00:42:09 And what it often means, I think, is that the narrative, the proper narrative certainly doesn't get to people. And in fact, the opposite's true. That we've certainly come to find that over the last decade or so that the three of us have been involved, that if we look at major media outlets, whether that's CNN or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, they've been adversarial. And so I think one thing that I would be curious about is especially given, you know, your extensive background, the fact that you keep current with world events. You know, how do you perceive Bitcoin? And what kind of

Starting point is 00:43:00 of things out there make you question it or or things that are unclear to you like kind of kind of how do you and in your peer group i mean the people you hang out with yeah you seem to kind of get it but do you find that to be the case for your peers or not yeah i have a good buddy who's a homebiller or he tries to be a homebiller here in california which is not easy who he's told me this story a few times about this friend of his at the time was a billionaire who made his wealth in the gaming industry and this was how many years ago I guess it's it's when $10,000 would buy a lot of Bitcoin so you guys tell me how many years ago that was probably 15, 12 years ago

Starting point is 00:43:54 Yeah, okay. And this guy went to my buddy, the home builder, it was fairly well off, but he was in some struggle because there was some issues with permitting and that kind of things. So the guy said to him, look, just give me 10,000 bucks. You ought to bet on this thing called Bitcoin. My friend Brian's like, what? What's that? He said, no, just 10,000 bucks. I'm telling you you're going to make a minute, you know. And Brian said, no, no, no, I just, I don't have the excess cash at this point. And so to this day, he's like, he said how many billion dollars would I be worth? You know, if I had done that, so there's, in my peer group, there, I'll tell you how my peers feel. They probably feel like me. We missed the boat, God damn it. It was like, you know, if you brought it to me today, I'd be in. But man, you know, it's just, it's like it's too late. Everybody got in early, you know, they've done wonderful.

Starting point is 00:44:54 and no matter when they passed, they will have done wonderfully, good for them, and good for them. It's just that it's like the train that left the state. It's almost like Bob, it's like if you weren't into building AI 10, 12 years ago, you know, you're way behind the curve now. Or if you weren't into, would pick an industry in the tech sector. And, you know, if you didn't get in early, you're never really be a winner. Oh, your PC Quillan company in 2010, you were too late, right? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:24 Exactly. So it's not as though they wouldn't like a lot of it if they could get their hands on it at some reasonable price. And I know that that would be the topic would be what's reasonable. But it's, yeah, I missed the train. It's sad that it's a price bias. I mean, just to draw a comparison to that, I think Amazon is probably the best performing, you know, one of the best performing stocks other than NVIDIA, which is just going nuts. But it comparable to Bitcoin is Amazon because it came out, you know, before the G. in early 2000 and the internet got started and it's up 288,000% from the time when it came and I recall a lot of people you know in the 2008 period the 2010 period 15 period all say oh gosh yeah I wish I'd gotten in on that but you know you guys have made a ton of money but you're too like well it just kind of kept going but you know you know people the people who bought at a hundred dollars said the same thing because they said I could have got this at a nickel and the people who bought it $1,000 said the same thing.

Starting point is 00:46:26 Someone got out for $10,000. Someone got out for a couple thousand or less. And someday, you know, it's 100,000 just under $100,000 a day. I mean, in 10 years, 15 years, people say, you know, you bunch of Bitcoin for below a million bucks? And yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:41 I bought one for a market. You know, and it's a million now. In fact, when I sign books with my book when I go to the show, signed books, I always put the Bitcoin price in there on the day because I want whoever receives the book. I know they're, kids will look at that book someday and say, hey, mom or dad met the guy who wrote this thing.

Starting point is 00:46:58 Gosh, when they got this book, it was only $70,000. People feel like to be late for it or not, you know? Well, I was just going to say, maybe 5% of the peers I know have been wise enough to figure out a way to make it, at least some percentage of their portfolio, right? You know, because they're like, yeah, I'm not going to miss out on this. and they can afford to be that diversified. And they'll treat Bitcoin just like they would treat gold, you know. But I would say probably the other, the impediment to boomers like myself and others in my peer group is that, you know, you're just so damn busy.

Starting point is 00:47:39 You know, like, you know, for me, I'd be thinking, okay, if it's at 90,000 today or something, I think in these big round terms, like I need to get one Bitcoin, right? I know, I know, I know. But it's like a lack of sophistication and understanding how you can get in without having to buy one big solid coin. There's a price buy. It's one of the reasons some of the other cryptos exist. Like we are all Bitcoin purists. Like we would say, don't mess with any of the other shit. It's all tainted.

Starting point is 00:48:14 But it attracts other people because it might be $3 or $12 or $20. because we live in a cocoon, John, or in our own echo chamber. It's valuable to hear from other people because it helps us kind of prioritize how we talk about it. And I think one of the things I'll offer just a little bit more to what Gary and Larry have said relative to the you're too late. The first thing is to understand that there's only 21 million Bitcoin. And, you know, remember when you just said it, like, hey, if I could only get one, like, which would be a little under $100,000 right now. Well, if there's only, there's four times more millionaires in the world than there are Bitcoin in the world. So it's almost, and we're at a point where, and that scarcity can't change.

Starting point is 00:49:15 So it's different than anything else, whether it's a stock or whether it's gold or anything else. We've never had an asset in the world other than maybe a Monet painting or a collectible item, but where a true commodity had a fixed supply. And you could think of it as we're competing against, remember what I said before, you know, what man should work for what another man can print. There is no limit on the money printer. So as that printer keeps rolling, and you've even said it yourself, like we're headed toward a revolution. And whether that's a violent revolution or an economic catastrophe, you know,

Starting point is 00:50:04 or some combination of the two, it is a separation from that. So the way, you know, and Larry, Larry wrote a great book on this, but we view it as there is no limit. And even if we wanted to put it in current terms, there's about $90 trillion dollars of assets in the world today. There's only 21 million Bitcoin. Abundant mines is an Oregon-based husband and wife own Bitcoin mining company, making Bitcoin mining accessible to investors of all ages and experience levels. They're fully managed. White Glove service allows you to own all of your own equipment and earn steady Bitcoin denominated income without lifting a finger. Whether you're starting with 10,000 or 10 million,

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Starting point is 00:53:02 You remember Metcalf's Law, John, by chance, from your computer day? So it's, you know, for those that don't know, it's the power of a network is equal to the square of the number of users of the network. So it's a, it's a term. And whether that's cell phones, whether that's personal computers, whether that's whatever. But it applies to monetary systems too. So as adoption of Bitcoin increases, the value of the network increases, its usability increases. And we're at a point in the adoption of Bitcoin as a monetary network where it already moves more value annually than Visa and MasterCard combined. So very few people would probably understand that.

Starting point is 00:53:47 That's how much movement of money. And it's doing so in a frictionless way. There's no approvers. Right now, at least, those are very inexpensive transactions. I could, if I had a billion dollars, I could send you a billion dollars, John, for about $2. And I could do it in 10 minutes. The existing monetary system cannot compete with that. And if you think about it, we can't even back up a little geopolitically,

Starting point is 00:54:21 and you think about that, what does that mean for a nation state? So like Russia, which when Russia invaded the Ukraine, one of Biden's first actions, I think it was a mistake, was to kick them off of the SWIFT system. And the reality is all it did is it forced them toward Bitcoin. The Russians now, their foreign trade minister, openly admits that that is a major part of how they do international commerce now is, you know, selling oil and buying oranges using Bitcoin. So where I'm getting at is whether it's at the nation state level or the corporate level or the individual level, the removal, the removal of the removal, the removal of government or, or an overseer from the process is part of it. And we'll even use Reagan's words, right?

Starting point is 00:55:13 You know, government is the problem. Well, let's get them the hell out of money and the monetary system. You see, knowing what little I do about where Bitcoin stands in the halls of Congress and halls of government is, you know, I think Bitcoin is absolutely ultimately going to succeed as, you know, it's digital gold. It's an asset. The world will treat it that way. Washington will treat it that way. Now, I think the industry is in this interesting situation, whichever industry goes through.

Starting point is 00:55:50 And that is, it's looking for nods of approval and respect and, you know, ultimately, regulation that allows the system to grow and flourish. So the good news is it's well on its way towards getting the necessary regulatory framework to thrive. It's just one of this one of those, be careful what you wish for things, right? Because, you know, in a regulatory framework, you're inviting all. sorts of mischief, you know, and will the industry be happy with how Washington treats

Starting point is 00:56:39 it purely from an asset perspective, how to you tax it, you know, all that stuff? Where I, the Mount Everest that I see is, is when you, when the Bitcoin wants to move as it wants to, to go from an asset, digital asset, to becoming the money supply. You know, that's a big term. And that is because it forces every single player in the current system to see their power. Right. And how do you bring that about? That's really, I mean, because, I mean, you may have lots of very conservative fiscal restraint Republicans that would say, yeah, we really ought to really ought to move to a system that's highly efficient that doesn't involve the government and the rest of that.

Starting point is 00:57:27 But in saying and doing that, they are giving up. are seeding power to another, right? And why do you get elected to gain power and to use power? Right. So that's why I always feel like on its way to becoming truly the money supplier, the monetary system, it has to achieve something that, I don't know, that any civilization and history has ever achieved at this level, you know, and that's going to be difficult. Yeah, I think our view, the way we're going to get there, John, you're right, they're never going to give it up voluntarily, just like they're never going to win that term limits.

Starting point is 00:58:06 And rather sadly, because it's going to be a painful episode when it happens, but rather sadly, what's going to happen is the currency is going to fail. You know, we're going to have a hyperinflation event, and at that point in time, you know, there'll be a brief period where there's a little bit of chaos. And then we'll say, okay, what kind of money can we trust? and the only choices are going to be gold, silver, and Bitcoin. If the United States currency fails, that means the world currency fails.

Starting point is 00:58:32 That's right. I mean, everybody's so tethered to it. Right. And so that's why I, you know, I've always people will say, you know, well, this country's so divided, right, and left where, you know, everybody's gone to their distinct corners. There's no middle anymore. How do we get Americans to rally with each other and unite? It's like, yeah, well, what history has proven is you need some. absolutely tremendous calamity like a World War II or Pearl Harbor.

Starting point is 00:59:03 That's what it takes to get people's frameworks completely altered to change. Yeah, and if that's what needs to happen to our monetary system, it's not going to be pretty. And I don't know for how long, you know, but I know that will be an earth-shaking event like something we've never seen before. John, if I could go back a second to your statement that you were kind of like thinking you needed one Bitcoin, a whole Bitcoin. I just want to put this out there from what I understand to be in the top 1% of people that own Bitcoin. You only need a fourth of a Bitcoin. So you really don't need a lot of Bitcoin to have a lot of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:59:49 Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. And, you know, after having this conversation, see, one of the other, probably the worst thing that happened to me in my, in my labor and gateway was, like many other corporations, gateway offered me, well, you know, you're in the executive, you're in the C-suite now, so we're going to free of charge, provide you with a financial advisor. And, of course, here comes Goldman, right.

Starting point is 01:00:13 Because I was so busy, you know, doing whatever I was supposed to be doing in my work, work life, is it, okay, I'll outsource all my financial advice and thinking and decisions to this thing called Goldman. To this day, you know, all my, my whole, all my everything is tied up and Goldman manages it. Well, it made me stupid, you know, basically, right? I mean, I mean, how much do you think about economics when there's some paid person who's just think about economics for you, you know? And, but it, but I, and Goldman as an institution, I know has been down on Bitcoin for quite some time. You know, they're not the J.P. Morgan's of the world.

Starting point is 01:00:54 And, but this conversation is going to lead me to start asking some pretty tough questions of my financial advisor as why I don't have Bitcoin as part of my diversified mix, you know? I love that, John, because I think that's what you go to your friend, right? So your friend, we'll call it a decade or so ago. had even as a billionaire putting $10,000 in Bitcoin at that period would have been life-changing. Had Bitcoin gone to zero, it wouldn't have changed his life at all. So I think, I write a monthly newsletter now for Financial Advisor magazine. It goes to 400,000 wealth and financial advisors.

Starting point is 01:01:40 And that's part of what I've been telling them for several years now, is I say, hey, you're going to have to be accountable to the people who years ago said to you, what about Bitcoin? And you said, no, it's too risky. It's speculative. It's a Ponzi. You know, whatever it is. Well, it's not.

Starting point is 01:02:01 It's roughly the sixth most valuable asset in the world. It's roughly on par with Amazon right now. And you told them for all these years to stay away. and now you have a difficult situation because what's happening is a lot of them are pivoting Morgan Stanley and you know fidelity and even like vanguard is now changed their tune like how do you do that how do you go to them and say oh now like you said I feel like I missed the boat so you're going to go to them after they feel like they miss the boat and tell them now to get in like it's it's very very weird situation and they were dead wrong

Starting point is 01:02:43 wrong. Obviously, they were dead wrong and they didn't do their work. A lot of their own vested interests are all about keeping Bitcoin out. Well, right. I mean, they make money from selling stocks and so they're going to sell stuff. Yeah. So it's, I mean, I've often said it's only a matter of time until somebody brings a class acts and lawsuit against these advisors and says, hey, you know, this is the best performing financial asset last 16 years. Why didn't I own any of it? That's your job is to put me in these good assets, you know, I'm going to sue you for malpractice. I mean, I don't know how much traction they'll get on that, but the point is that, you know, people are being forced to

Starting point is 01:03:23 reckon with it. Yeah, you know, I don't know. And you guys have probably thought about this, but I'm trying to understand as what parallels, if any, exist behind the evolution of AI and Bitcoin, you know, and I just say that because, you know, the world right now is half of its on fire, you know, say, I can't wait for AI. I think of the productivity gains I'm going to get. Go, go, go, you know, and who cares about the rules, whatever. And the other half is scared to death. I'm going to lose my job.

Starting point is 01:03:56 You know, this is going to be the end of the world. You know, robots will run the world. And it's like, okay, well, the truth is somewhere in between. But it's an accelerated, you know, the situation is just accelerating where these AI advances are upon a suit quicker than we even know. And I'm wondering, it just makes sense to me that from a monetary standpoint, I'm not surprised that the digital economy is going to just move along with AI. And that's going to be a lot of wind at its back, I think.

Starting point is 01:04:28 I'd be interesting your viewpoint on that. And there's a lot there. I mean, that's probably a whole episode in of itself, John. But I'll say a couple things. You know, one as it pertains to AI, I think AI is going to need a currency. and the logical currency of AI is Bitcoin. So I think there will be a correlation as this thing matures. And in fact, there's interesting examples.

Starting point is 01:04:53 If you look at, let's say, a Tesla car, and instead of thinking of the car as owned by somebody, you think of the car itself as a entity which wants to preserve itself. I'll use this as an example. Well, it can drive off literally out of the factory and start earning money. It can start giving rides. And it can collect and know that it has that, it can collect Bitcoin and know that it's getting it.

Starting point is 01:05:33 And it knows when it needs a recharge. It knows when it needs new breaks. and it has a currency by which it can sustain itself. And so you can, I think that's an easy example for people to get, but, you know, it could be a robot. It could be even a completely virtual agent that now has a mechanism by which it can do common. It's kind of scary shit, but it's, and it's wild, you know, to think about. I think it will happen way faster, you know, even though. all of us are in the back nine of life.

Starting point is 01:06:10 I think we will see this in our lifetime. And probably even within the decade, we'll see these sorts of things fulfill themselves. I think interestingly, John, we came through an industry, the personal computer industry, and we look at the way it changed the world, the way adoption occurred, the way it changed labor and like all those sorts.

Starting point is 01:06:37 And I think, you know, that was a foreshadow. This will be a bigger impact. But that, you know, what happened, I think you entered in the mid-90s, right? I think that's when you came to Gateway. So you came in and we started working together almost at the inflection, a key inflection point, I would say. You, you know, you entered there. I happened to start about 15 years before that. And, you know, we went through the classic.

Starting point is 01:07:07 curve of the innovators, the early adopters, the early majority. I think you came right as we were leaving the early majority and kind of entering the mainstream. And that next six, seven years, which when we work together at Gateway, we're kind of, that was the real glory day, like, you know, of that. And that's where the world changed. Because prior to that, we didn't have broadband. And there really wasn't no internet. People were largely using their personal computer to do things like word processing

Starting point is 01:07:44 and spreadsheets. They maybe had an email account, but it was through AOL. It was a very different kind of world. And what happened over the next seven, eight years is it changed everything, right? We went from one PC, maybe in each house or each classroom, to every student has one. every desk and every business has one. Everybody has their own laptop. We saw administrative jobs collapse, right?

Starting point is 01:08:11 Clerical jobs, administrative jobs, you know, completely collapsed. I'll call those sort of things. But AI is leaps and bounds beyond that. Yeah, I think that's, you really put it well, Bob. It's almost like AI needs a monetary system that can keep up with it. You know, that's what it seems like. That'll be when that it's like. You mentioned like you're not really been active.

Starting point is 01:08:36 You're letting Goldman kind of, you know, at a personal level. But do you view organizations? We'll use the Reagan Foundation, which I know you're no longer active. When they look at managing their endowment or their trust, I'm not quite sure what structure you guys have, how do you see them looking at something like Bitcoin? And you were part of the, you know, so the Weight Family Foundation and philat philanthropic, you know, endeavors. How do you see them looking at it? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when I started at the Reagan Foundation, I was stunned that its endowment was only like 30 million.

Starting point is 01:09:24 And that, you know, that number, I mean, that, that was, that would be enough to pay for three quarters of a year of operation. I mean, it was just way too small. So we went on a huge development spree and rate, you know, by the time I left, we had $350 million in the endowment. And interestingly enough, yep, Goldman. Goldman managed to send money too. Anyways, and the thing about Bitcoin and I'll say, let's say the nonprofit world, which Reagan Foundation would be. So the entire nonprofit sector has a more conservative dial on their investment strategy than you would if you were a business or in private enterprise, right? Because, you know, you've got donors, not customers.

Starting point is 01:10:18 And you have to watch every dollar like a hawk if you want to stay tax exempt and grow. So I would say, you know, like while any company, Microsoft or others have this, piece of Bitcoin in their investment portfolio, the harder not to be crack will be the major endowments, whether Harvard or the Reagan Foundation, or the Reagan Foundation, or have you, because they're just naturally like, oh, man, if it's an asset that goes up and down and way too much, you know, they'll stay away. I think it'll take some stability and more broader acceptance, and it will reach the point where smart endowments in their nonprofit space will invest and we'll get involved. But I think at least at this point, it's probably, you know, further out on the horizon.

Starting point is 01:11:12 Well, yeah, we're going to kind of move off of a Bitcoin because I think maybe we'll close with this. I mentioned John John is one of the most interesting people in the world. And after, I guess it was no simultaneous with running the Reagan Library, John authored a couple books, at least the first one, right? John, the first one you completed, at least while you were there. Did you do the second one too? Second one. Yeah. And I had the pleasure of going to the Reagan Library where we had the, I guess the unveiling, John. I don't know what you would call that, where you unveiled the book. But the first book was called The Shroud Conspiracy. And it's a book. I've read the Shroud Conspiracy and the sequel to the Shroud Conspiracy, both a couple times.

Starting point is 01:12:07 They're phenomenal books. I guess you wouldn't call it historical fiction. John, what would you call it? Maybe. If you're familiar with the Da Vinci Code and, you know, that style of it's a scientific religious thriller. And this one, as you can probably guess from the title, involves the shroud of Turan. And so I think, John, maybe just kind of, you know, why did you write that book? And what, I'm also interested in your perspectives on the shroud itself.

Starting point is 01:12:45 Well, I just bought the book, John. Thank you. Both became bestsellers, which was kind of nice. and somewhat of a flu because I had never written novels before. But the idea for this series is built on when I was 17 years old. I sat there. I'm Catholic. I went to a Catholic high school and we sat in this religion class one day.

Starting point is 01:13:07 And they showed this film by the Catholic Church was about the shroud of terrain. And, you know, when you see the shroud and you look at the image that's on that famous cloth and you stare at it and you're like you've been raised, always kind of wonder, well, what does Jesus Christ? What did he actually look like? And you look at the shroud. It's kind of stunning. Have you seen it in person?

Starting point is 01:13:37 Yes, I have. I have. Yeah. Now, it's not on display in the public very often because the church is hugely careful about lighting. You know, as an artifact, especially that old. You have to be extremely careful about exposing it. to radiation, outside light, you know, ultraviolet, all that.

Starting point is 01:13:57 So it put the idea in my head that this is a story that could be very fascinating to write about. And 35 years later, it's still on my mind. I went, Bob Wood knows this fellow very well, Ted Waite, who I worked for after Gateway. I ran the Wade Institute. one of our projects was let's go find the lost airplane of Amelia Earhart. So I went down in the South Pacific for two months aboard some really big ships trying to find her aircraft, you know, based on formulas that would determine where she probably entered and crashed and the rest of that. But anyways, when you are vacuuming the ocean floor

Starting point is 01:14:44 for two months, there's a lot of things that are, you know, you have a lot of time on your hands. And so it was on that trip that I developed the plot for the book. But I didn't write it right away. I waited to us at the Reagan Library and I had some time. And so at nighttime, I just, for six months straight, every night I went and wrote this book. And it's about a historical anthropologist who was an atheist, you know, damned God's an absurd concept. and he's made a career and made a lot of money proving religious relics as fakes around the world. And he does it with using science.

Starting point is 01:15:28 Another great team of scientists there ain't approved through carbon dating and any number of other means. What's real and what's not? And so I thought, well, why don't I put that to the test? I took this guy as the character who was asked by the Catholic Church to prove or disprove the authenticity of the shroud of Durant. burial cloth of Jesus Christ. And it's a, the book is kind of fascinating because it's not just a scientific whodunit, but it is, it's a journey. It's not just a journey around the world. It's a journey of internally what happens to him when he discovers through scientific means that the shroud is real. It is authentic. Because you can imagine as an atheist that throws his world into

Starting point is 01:16:13 total tailspin because now he has to believe that they're really. This thing called faith really has something behind it. And so the book's kind of a love story and a science story and a religious story. And it ends up getting very out there because in this plot, this group of individuals wants to steal a speck of blood from the shroud in order to recombine the DNA and create a second coming of their own through cloning of Jesus Christ. So it's a big, big tale. And fortunately, it sold really well.

Starting point is 01:16:53 Hopefully, one of the things I'm spinning in my lonely retirement is trying to figure out if I can get the books converted into a full-length feature film. And I'm getting making some progress. We'll see if it goes, where it goes from here. I will say this. And I appreciate you sharing us, John. I think to try to bring it back to Bitcoin, I think what is interesting for, and I encourage everybody to get the book, read,

Starting point is 01:17:17 the book. And if you're a Bitcoiner, think about the protagonist, Bonduron. Is that, was it right? John Bonderon, do I remember it right? He's an atheist and he becomes a believer. And I think there's an analogy to Bitcoin, too, that there's a whole bunch of people out there that are non-believers. That, and, you know, part of what we're doing is, you know, part of what we're doing is, you know, we're converting them much like, you know, through the truth, right? Through the truth. You know, what is money? And, John, you know, we view this, the three of us.

Starting point is 01:18:00 I'm speaking for the three of us. You know, it's very much a good versus evil battle that we think, you know, money and the abuse of the monetary system creates a great deal of, and maybe even almost all of the problems of the world. And if we have a truthful form of money, we have a society that has a chance. Yeah, really. I mean, that's interesting. I think you're right.

Starting point is 01:18:23 You're absolutely right. You know, another quick side story. As I didn't, in the plot of this book, one of the antagonists comes to find he has a pancreatic cancer. and he's given just a few months to live. And I remember at the time as I was researching, what are the five worst cancers you can get? Pancreatic was right at the top of the list. And I didn't know at the time,

Starting point is 01:18:57 but as I was writing, I too had terminal cancer. And I was on the list of five. And so I decided to finish the series before I passed. was given three months to live. And boy, did that ever put me into a faith tunnel? But at the end of the day, you know, here I said, having given less than 1% chance to live, just like the character in my book, who was also given a second life, but through very bad meetings.

Starting point is 01:19:34 I'll just say that. So it's kind of, it's interesting with how this world spins around sometimes. And, you know, by the way, the way I survived, I ended up, you know, I was asked this question when I launched a book because a lot of people know about that story, especially that was close to me. And I had, I underwent five years of experimental treatments. And finally, it was this combination of brand new immunotherapy drugs that I took. But interestingly enough, the, after the first immunotherapy treatment, I also got on a plane and I flew to Lords in France where, especially if you're a person of faith, in the Catholic faith, there's the sight of a miracle.

Starting point is 01:20:21 So I immersed myself in the springs of lords, and when I came back six weeks later, for the first time in five years, my scan showed it was clean. Now, people say, well, what did it? Was this? The miraculous, the spring or wasn't the immunotherapy? I don't know. Maybe it was a combination of both. Yeah. Well, I thank you for sharing that, John, obviously, as your friend and somebody I respect tremendously, I'm so happy you're here. Like, it is a blessing. I've sent plenty of prayers for you back in those days. And, you know, you had a bunch of prayer warriors fighting for you at that time. but what a wonderful story. And, you know, John, I'm so happy that we got to do this.

Starting point is 01:21:10 I think we talked about it probably a year ago doing something like this, but we finally pulled it off. And I think people are going to love this. I really, really enjoyed spending this time with you. Thank you. Thank you, guys. I did. I learned a lot.

Starting point is 01:21:24 And that's the next call I'm going to make us to Goldman Sachs. Well, when you get our books, you'll have some ammunition. You'll say, hey, you guys. got to read this book. You know, this will explain why. I'll tell you what, if you send me those books, I'll send you some copies of mine. How's that? Sounds like a deal. It's like a deal to me, too. Hey, you. Yes, you are watching the Bitcoin price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch, take action. Head over to btccessions.ca.ca slash learn for free step by step

Starting point is 01:22:03 tutorials that guide you through every major skill you need to know, plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen.

BTC Sessions - "There Needs to be a Revolution" Heading Off the $38T Debt Cliff | Bitcoin Boomers

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